Sunday, March 29, 2015

Whew! I kind of fell off the edge of the world there this past week. I had a wonderful show in Dallas/Ft. Worth. Tons of driving and probably not enough sleep, but it's always a great crowd at the Fiber Fest, and I enjoyed having time to visit with old friends and new ones in my booth.

At home, the puppy wrassling continues. Lizzie's working hard at figuring out all the rules. She's not 100% consistent on everything - she is, after all, only 10 weeks today, but she's got the basics on sit, stay, come, no, down and a few others we are working on. About 5 days after she came home, she wound up with a parasite infection and that made potty-training kind of rough for a few days while we got that treated, but she's on track with that now and we are really happy to say - no accidents in the house or in her kennel at all in the past 10 days. Woot!

I will be sort of hit or miss on blog posts for the next 20 days or so - I'm trying to get ready to head off to the Interweave Yarn Fest in Colorado on the 16th of April, so I'm frantically dyeing and skeining and labelling. (And working on a few other things to boot right now that are all on mid-April deadlines.) I hope to be back to normal blogging after that!

Monday, March 16, 2015

This week, I finished up the week 11 book, East. A big thank-you to Laura, who recommended it. I wholeheartedly enjoyed this book, which is a retelling of the East of the Sun, West of the Moon fairy tale (and one of my all-time favorites). I wish I had grown up with this book - it's technically young adult, but I think carries itself with so many good things, it's a great read no matter what. You can see my review over on Goodreads.

I need to scout around and see if I can find a copy of Snow White, Blood Red for my short-story collection, but if not, I'm 99% sure I've got something else I can put in it's place here. It's not available via Kindle, but I might be able to get it thru the library. In the meantime, I'm starting on The Winter Palace for this week's read.

WEEKS & TOPICS

1. a book with more than 500 pages: Bitter Greens by Kate Forsyth. FINISHED.

Friday, March 13, 2015

This week has completely gone out the window for pretty much everything at my end. Between the new puppy (who is doing great, but she's also 7 weeks old) and getting ready for the DFW Fiber Fest, I haven't done much of anything else.

Before Miss Lizzie arrived tho, I did get my second bobbin of singles spun of the BFL I've been working on.

I have started plying but have a ways to go before this done. Hoping I can sneak in a little non-work time before I leave for Dallas on Wednesday to finish this up!

Monday, March 9, 2015

I've had very little time to read this past week - lots of dye studio tasks I'm working on right now. I did start East, recommended to me by a bookish friend, and am thoroughly enjoying it. (It's a retelling of the East of the Sun, West of the Moon fairy tale and it's brilliantly done.) Hoping to get a little more reading time this week while puppy-sitting the new little one for D in the afternoons - but we'll see how that plan goes.....

WEEKS & TOPICS

1. a book with more than 500 pages: Bitter Greens by Kate Forsyth. FINISHED.

Sunday, March 8, 2015

Whew! This didn't feel much like a weekend this week. I wound up working on some freelance copywriting work I do occasionally Friday and Saturday, interspersing that with a ton of dyeing in the studio, plus a photo shoot on Saturday. While I was working away, D drove to the NW corner of Colorado (about 8 hrs of driving each way) Friday and Saturday to pick up his new puppy.

Here's Lizzie!

She's (obviously) very cute, but even tho she's only 7 weeks, D picked out a pretty strong personality! She's been trying to boss the two older dogs around, and she's absolutely fearless. Figured out steps already after one hesitant trial and then she was off to the races. We are getting her into the groove of the schedule here - and D's going to take some time to stay at home the next few mornings and get her onto an established routine. She's already been pretty good about trying to learn things - she's already figured out her name and she'll come bounding over when she's called. We are working on the potty-training and keeping her from trying to nip or jump up. She's been 100% on not having accidents in her crate already - D got up mid-night with her last night and she went right out, found her bathroom spot, and came back in and went back to sleep without just a few token whines - nothing serious. (OMG - when we brought Rowan home, after the first night when she was exhausted, we had several weeks - WEEKS! - of the screams of the damned coming from her every night, for hours and hours. Fun times.)

Today while D is on puppy duty, I'm going to run out and pick her up a few other chew toys and things to entertain her. She's already very fond of her stuffed duck - but it's good to give them some options too.

Friday, March 6, 2015

This week, I was in the mood for a relatively quick spin - I dove back into my Spin The Bin 2015 project and pulled out a braid of blue-faced Leicester from Two If By Hand.

I'm spinning this up into (hopefully) a DK-weight, 2-ply yarn. I've got the first bobbin of singles finished and the second one started.

I'm really trying to stick to finding 15 minutes to myself to do a bit of spinning each day - I am so busy right now with show prep and other things that I find myself not making any relaxation time for me, and you know what they say about all work and no play.....

Wednesday, March 4, 2015

My partner at Stitch Definition, Elizabeth Green-Musselman of Dark Matter Knits, and I had the opportunity to work with the wonderful Kim at The Woolen Rabbit. Kim has some upcoming spring shows and wanted to garner a bit of new pattern support for some of her gorgeous yarn. She sent each of us a couple of skeins of her Opal yarn (merino, silk, cashmere) to work with.

I designed the Kellygnow Shawl from my two skeins of Opal fingering-weight. This is a Faroese-type shawl with a center back panel of leaves, flanked by two side panels of woodland and leaf motifs, and a knit-on border reminiscent of a rocky stream.

I loved how the two colorways Kim sent complemented each other with all those beautiful greens!

I started the next shawl for the Heroines Shawl club. I am planning for it to have 4 sections, or maybe a fifth if I've got enough yardage, and I'm almost finished the first section. My goal is to finish that section, and try to work thru the second section.

The other shawl project is still on hold.

Personal Knitting:

I cast on for the Furrow mittens by Kirsten Kapur. I'm using some Harrisville Worsted from stash in Fawn and Teak with a bit of black for the contrast rows in the cuffs. I had to drop down two needle sizes to 5s, and I wound up not increasing sts after the cuff was finished, since these were coming out pretty large. I'm going to try to finish up mitten #1 this week.

I also cast on a pair of socks: The Long Dark of Moria by Claire Ellen. She had originally knit these using Wooly Wonka Fibers Arianrhod Sock, but I had a skein of Aerten Sock in the same colorway (Avalon), so I decided to use that. I had originally cast these on thinking I'd knit on them in the car while we drove back and forth to Taos this weekend, but then we didn't make the trip, so these will likely be my travel project for when I go to Dallas/Fort Worth in another few weeks. Nothing specific I want to get done on these - if I feel like working on them, and have the mitten finished, I'll pick them up for a bit.

Tuesday, March 3, 2015

This is a Faroese-style shawl with a center back panel of a climbing roses lace motif, with small floral sprig lace motifs on the side panels. It is finished off with a floral eyelet border.

I knit this using a new-to-the-shop yarn, Aeslin, which is a light fingering weight yarn, but one of my testers also knit it in Ceridwen, which is a true fingering weight yarn, and it came out beautifully as well.

A big thank-you to Dilshani Tyson Photography for the gorgeous pictures!

Monday, March 2, 2015

This week, I finished up Seance In Sepia. A pretty quick and easy read. It was a little slow to get started, but I gave it the benefit of the doubt and I enjoyed it. It's a historical mystery (complete with smoking gun), told with a contemporary story - both focused around an old photograph found in a book. It's filled with all kinds of interesting tidbits about turn-of-the-century seances, police investigations, and Free Love and the feminist movement.

I started East, at the suggestion of a friend - I originally had a book (Jabberwocky) that was billed in the Goodreads blurb as a book about how Lewis Carroll wrote the original poem, but... well.. it apparently was only that in passing and not something I was interested in reading once I looked it more closely. East, however, is exactly the kind of book I like. It's a re-telling of the East of the Sun, West of the Moon fairy tale, which is one of my favorites. I'm just starting it, but I suspect this one will go right up there with Bitter Greens for great books I've read this year.

WEEKS & TOPICS

1. a book with more than 500 pages: Bitter Greens by Kate Forsyth. FINISHED.

Sunday, March 1, 2015

We had actual winter this weekend! And I know everyone on the east coast and particularly in the northeast is very very tired of winter, but we really need snow. We've been in a drought for the last several years and March begins our windy season which morphs into fire season, but the more moisture we get now, the less risk of fires.

Of course, in the way things go, my MIL is here for a visit and she lives in the southern part of the US, where she sees snow about once every other decade, and while we assured her we normally have sunny weather (and it has been sunny and in the 60s!), it very much was not this weekend. It's been overcast, snowing or sneeting, and cold the entire time she's been here. It was bad enough on the roads yesterday that I opted not to make the 2-hour drive up to Taos for a book signing - I probably could have gotten there, but coming home through the gorge in the late afternoon wasn't looking very good.

So we wound up staying here and doing things around the house. I worked in my studio for several hours, started some new knitting projects. We watched The Theory of Everything last night, which was excellent. (It's the story of renowned physicist Stephen Hawking and his wife, Jane, and their life together.) Easy to see why Eddie Redmayne won an Oscar for his portrayal of Hawking.

Tonight we are going to try to go out to dinner and then my MIL leaves for home tomorrow morning. A busy week ahead..... D leaves at the end of the week to go pick up his new puppy as well!